How To Roast Root Vegetables

Dave shows you how to prepare root vegetables that are so delicious, even your kids will love them.

(Music Playing) Hi, I am Dave Epstein. Welcome to Growing Wisdom. What I am going to show you today is a way to prepare what we call mostly root vegetables. These are vegetables which grow under the ground or winter type vegetables. Vegetables like an Acorn squash or a Butternut squash. They have also chosen some red bliss potatoes, some yams or some sweet potatoes, carrots work really well, bits work really well do this as well. You could also use parsnip. You could use white potatoes really the choices is up to you. Just find vegetables which you are going to root vegetables that are heavier squashes because when you cook this. They will cook a lot better if they are all of the same type. The next thing you want to do is you want to choose the spices that you are going to put them. One mixture might be a little bit of nutmeg, a little bit of cinnamon, a little of brown sugar, another mixture might be garlic, salt, oregano and paprika. Another choice might be to do something on the hotter side which might involve paprika, cayenne, and pepper and a little bit of dried mustard, and always a little bit fresh ground pepper works in any of those. So, first thing we want to do is we want to clean our vegetables. I am going to start with the bits because we are going to roasting the vegetables. You do not have to peel them. You could just clean them really well. Basically, going to create a nice variety of vegetables here. I like to cut them about a half an inch to an inch, three quarters of an inch, something like that take the pieces. If you cut them too thick, they would not cook all the way through. If you cut them too thin, they are going to dry out. So, we are going to base in this a little bit of olive oil mixture and this is where you can creative. So, I am going to put a little bit of olive oil in. I am going to take a little bit of sea salt. I am going to add a little bit of paprika and I am going to add a little bit of my dried mustard. I like oregano. I really the vegetables with a little of bit oregano. I go a little bit heavier with my oregano. A little bit of garlic salt and I do add even on this one. I add just a touch of cinnamon. Then we are going to mix this up. We are really going to make sure that your vegetables are coated with the olive oil and the mixture. You want to put the oven at between 350 and 400 degrees. Generally, I put it literally at about 375. We are going to cook this for about an hour to an hour and half. You really want to be after about 45 minutes. You want to go in. You want to test them see how soft they are. They took a cookie sheet and I basically put a piece of thin foil on it. You do not have to spray the thin foil because of coarse, we have got so much olive oil on here. It is really not going to matter. It is going to stick. It is very important that they do not have the vegetables touching. So, you want a little bit of space between the vegetables. So, here we go, we are going to put this on the oven and we are just going to wait. See you an hour. Let us take a look, so about an hour is gone by and I checked this once, and what you can see has happen as the vegetables have shrunk up a little bit. The spices of all blended in here. We got the potatoes and they are really just fantastic. So, hope you have enjoyed this way to prepare some of the root vegetables that you can find at the groceries store or perhaps even grow on your own. Come back every week for all of our hints, tips and helps here at growingwisdom.com (Music Playing)